Lila Carson: High hopes fell flat

Cape Breton Post

Published: Feb 02 at 9:05 p.m.

Glace Bay’s heavy water plant didn’t turn out as expected

By Lila Carson

Premier Robert Stanfield officially opened the Deuterium Heavy Water Plant on May 1, 1967. Allan J. MacEachen announced it “… may be just the spark needed to bring other industry to this island. It’s the biggest break we’ve had in a long time.”

Remember that old song “High Hopes” by Frank Sinatra.

Another prominent Nova Scotian, Frank Sobey had high hopes when he said, “This project is perhaps the greatest self-help proposal which has originated in this region.”

Claims were made that this revolutionary development “will make Glace Bay one of the most modern places on earth” and “could make Cape Breton one of the leading centres of the western world for research and development in the nuclear power field.”

So what happened to all these high hopes and expectations?

When I walked into the Beaton Institute seeking information on the heavy water plant, a staff member said, “I wondered when someone would come looking for that information?”

It didn’t take me long to realize what a controversial topic it was, not to mention the amount of research it would take to come up with the “rest of the story.”

My mother sparked my interest when she found a 1963 newspaper showing the old Mira Gut bridge, not just the “train bridge” recently demolished, but the “car bridge” and the beach and the hill and field above the Mira River, where I grew up. Mom claimed that was the heavy water plant’s originally scheduled site, until Glace Bay wanted it.

The heavy water plant was built alongside Seaboard Power on the road to Donkin, the ideal location with the ocean and MacAskill Brook nearby, with a possibly heavier than normal concentration of “heavy water.”

Heavy water was needed to cool nuclear reactors back in the 1960s when a boom was expected. They needed a lot of water to meet the 20,000 gallons of water per minute requirements.

Someone told me her mom rented rooms out to “foreign workers” (20-25 per cent from New Brunswick, Montreal or out West) which made me think of the biblical “Tower of Babel” — different people giving instructions, in different languages and no one understanding or respecting each other.

The contractors, sub-contractors, tradesmen, and supervisors didn’t know or hadn’t worked with each other on such a project before.

Who wants to look stupid by asking dumb questions? Who was your boss? Whose instructions did you follow? Misunderstanding and dissension in the ranks added to the lack of communication. Layoffs, absenteeism, seniority, pride and separate union agreements led to wildcat strikes of epic proportion.

Another man said it wasn’t all bad, some mighty big homes got built from those salaries. Other comments included, “we kept our heads down and our mouths shut.” I heard words like “theft by truckload.” This was certainly not just a Cape Breton experience. Anyone remember Johnny Cash’s song “One Piece at a Time”?

In July 1963 expectations were to produce 200 tons of heavy water per year with hopes to soon double production. The right people were definitely involved, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Harold Urey and Jerome Spevack, atomic bomb developer. That year Spevack acknowledged “the imagination and aggressiveness of Nova Scotians.” Was it a myth he later suggested the workers had “coal miner attitude” of being “against the company?” Or was it more likely, “Cape Bretoners, like proud and vigorous men anywhere, can resent injustice, real or imagined. If matters are not properly explained to them they can, like men everywhere, react foolishly and even illegally, to attribute the difficulties of this plant to this alleged attitude is a “slander on Cape Breton.” (Industrial Inquiry Commission Report – 1967).

Reports said that 158,000 tons/coal/year, possibly as much as 350,000 tons and 2,000 jobs could have been created. High Hopes. But then massive mistakes, such as salt water corrosion destroying pipes, along with the destruction of Glace Bay workers’ reputations (“congenital troublemakers”) had detrimental effects on everything.

Deuterium had been awarded a $40-million contract to supply AECL with heavy water. Did the need for heavy water mysteriously disappear? Or did it relocate to Ontario? It didn’t end up being a win-win. AECL bailed out the heavy water plant in 1971 and rebuilt it, the problem being their estimates were $158.5 million short.

Officially closed in 1985, the heavy water plant remained an eyesore until it was demolished in 2013 with reports of $2.5 million spent to clean up the mess.

Enterprise Cape Breton remediated the property hoping to sell it for housing developments. So far it appears to just be a deserted park on the side of the road.

A very expensive lesson and what have we learned from it all?

Lila Carson used to be an elementary teacher who returned home to Cape Breton. She took a course on the history of Cape Breton at Cape Breton University and developed an interest in learning about where she lived. She now wants to share this knowledge with others. If you have any comments or ideas you would like to see in future columns, email her at lilacarson@hotmail.com.